Summary

The International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) is a
far-reaching program of fully standardized surveys investigating
householders' experience of crime in different countries. The data
were collected in four waves: 1989, 1992, 1996, and 2000. The main
focus of the ICVS is whether the respondent was a victim of theft of
or from vehicles, other thefts, vandalism, robbery, pickpocketing,
sexual harassment or violence, or assault. The surveys also
investigated the frequency of victimization, reasons for not reporting
a crime to the police, familiarity with the offender in the case of a
sexual offense, physical violence, injuries, fear of crime in the
respondent's local area, use of help agencies for victims,
satisfaction with police behavior, preferred legal sanctions,
punishment, and length of detention for offenders, safety precautions
when leaving home, possession of a gun, burglar alarm, or insurance,
and frequency of going out. Some of the 2000 surveys were administered
nationally and some were restricted to a main city within a given
country. The ICVS National Survey Data cover the following countries:
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Catalonia, Denmark, England and Wales,
Finland, France, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Poland, Portugal,
Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. The ICVS City
Survey Data cover the following countries: Albania, Argentina,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Botswana, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Colombia, Croatia,
Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lesotho, Lithuania,
Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Panama, Philippines, Poland,
Republic of Korea, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Swaziland,
Uganda, Ukraine, and Zambia.

Citation

ICVS International Working Group, United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), Turin, Italy, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Vienna, Austria, United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), Turin, Italy, and Mayhew, Pat. International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS), 1989-2000. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2006-01-18. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03803.v1

Time Period(s)

Date of Collection

1989

1992

1996

2000

Data Collection Notes

The principal investigators request that any
publications using ICVS data be sent to John van Kesteren, UNICRI,
Viale Maestri del Lavoro, 10, 10127 Torino, Italy.

Researchers are
to note that some of the surveys were administered nationally and some
were restricted to a main city in the country. The principal
investigators request that all users of datasets be careful in
selecting and comparing data. Data users are to consult the
identification variables I001 through I009 and the weighting variables
in the database and the codebook.

Sample

Samples of 1,000 to 2,000 cases were drawn from the
population of each country's largest city. In a few countries, the
surveys covered several cities by random dialing. In some countries,
there was an additional sample of 200 cases from rural areas, or a
national sample was taken. Sampling was generally hierarchical. It
began with identifying administrative areas within the city, followed
by a step-by-step procedure aiming at identifying areas, streets,
blocks, households, and, finally, household members aged 16 and
over. No substitution of the selected respondent was allowed. There
were some exceptions to this procedure. In Finland, a random selection
of individuals was drawn from the population register. In Northern
Ireland and some rural parts of Spain, telephone penetration was low
and interviews were taken face-to-face with some computer assistance.

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